DESIGN VERSION MANAGEMENT

Systems for version management have been in existence for some time, yet no system provides the complete range of services needed to control the versions and configurations of a complex design as it evolves over time. The authors describe a system, called a version server, to provide just these services. It supports an object-oriented model for organizing design data and provides operational mechanisms for controlling the design's evolution, such as object check-in/check-out and a validation subsystem. Although the emphasis is on VLSI CAD applications, the authors believe the approach can be extended to other design domains with little effort. The key is the explicit separation of structural information from the representation details of design data.